


How to Change the World Without Even Trying

by DeCarabas



Category: Terminator (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2007, recipient:Sarah T.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-25
Updated: 2007-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-22 12:20:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/237945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeCarabas/pseuds/DeCarabas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the prompt: "C'mon, kid, didn't you know your mom was crazy?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	How to Change the World Without Even Trying

One of the SWAT cops has his mother pinned face down on the ground. The second cop handcuffs her. All the rest, except for one, keep their guns trained on her. Only one cop is holding John, and he doesn't use handcuffs, and no one's really looking at them, except of course for his mother. But she signaled to John to do nothing. So he does nothing. He has to just let them take her.

There's no reason for that to change anything.

His mother has a plan to cover this; his mother has plans to cover everything. John will let them put him with a foster family, and then he will walk to the bus stop and buy a ticket. Ticket to where depends on just where they get separated. Oregon, Montana, New Hampshire, Alaska - he gets into the northern states so rarely that those contacts are few and far between, but if he can get there, they'll get him into Canada, to a private plane or a boat. Southern border's easier, with all the business contacts his mother has around there. He'll stay out of the country. They don't have a specific meeting place; he'll leave messages where his mother can find them when she gets out, if she gets out.

He has to leave his mother behind. That's how this works.

Thing is, though, John's not so thrilled with that plan right now, because they're separated, yeah, sure, but he's not seeing an immediate threat here. It's just cops who took her down. Not the guys who are part of the war, just the guys who don't know about it, the guys who are in the way. So if he sticks around a little longer, if he follows up on where they take her, what they do with her, maybe he can spring her; maybe they can switch to the plan where they head across the border together.

So the world changes.

It's not a shock that the family he gets placed with doesn't know about the war. Just about everyone doesn't know about the war, he's used to that. That's why his mother spends so much time and effort trying to warn people. Most of them think she's kinda wacko, sure, he's used to that too; but generally, even if they're not getting ready for the machines, the people his mom talks to are getting ready for _something_. They might not even know what. But the world's going south in a hurry, and they're stockpiling food and guns and living in trailers in deserts or cabins in the mountains and staying out of the system, and that's good enough.

There's a power outage the third night John stays with the foster family, and they don't know what to do with themselves. When the power hasn't come back on after an hour or so, they go to the mall to get something to eat because they don't know how to make a meal without an electric oven or a microwave. The daughter is still complaining about her interrupted Nintendo game.

John doesn't see the point of Mario or Zelda, but he's good with the arcade games. The shooters, the racing games, and this one game that's almost but not quite like the flight simulator he used to use. His mom had been with this pilot for a few weeks - drug runner, gun runner, John was never clear on which - they got a few free lessons out of him, before the guy left on his usual trip to the States and never came back. John still couldn't fly a plane, but he could manage the digital version all right.

The foster family talks about his mother as if she's crazy, which he expected, and as if she abused him. That he can't deal with. He comes to her defense and explains to them that his mother is saving the world, and they explain to him why she isn't, why she's a mess and a menace and thank God he's here with sane people who will straighten him out, and when he can't take the argument anymore he walks out. When he's away from their voices he remembers that the best thing to do in these situations is to sit tight and shut up and just keep waiting for news about his mother. He remembers this right up until the next time they badmouth his mother in front of him.

He has an appointment with a child psychiatrist. He goes and he explains about Judgment Day and the psychiatrist smiles and nods and then tells him the definition of delusion, and after that John stops trying to talk to him.

When his mother gets moved to Pescadero State Hospital, he thinks for sure she'll break out during the transport.

She doesn't.

He's behind in his training. It's kind of fun, like a vacation, but after a few days it just feels kind of pathetic. No firing range. He has to improvise when it comes to weights. The mother of the family asks him to come hiking with her once, some bonding thing, and after two easy miles they're back in the car. She talks about enrolling him in her daughter's karate class at Tokyo Bob's School Of Mixed Martial Arts (self defense for kids, aerobics for adults!). He shrugs and says whatever.

The foster family goes back to school shopping, and he grabs the first few shirts that fit him and then he goes to the arcade and plays a shooting game that is nothing at all like actual shooting. Hustling isn't a conscious decision so much as a matter of habit. He doesn't really need the pocket money right now - just look at the amount of cash the foster family was ready to drop on new clothes - but might as well stay in practice.

The foster father comes to find him just as he's collecting the cash from his thoroughly defeated rival, and disapproves. Strongly. There's a speech about the evils of gambling and then the foster mother starts talking about how it's not his fault, it's his mother, and when John tells her off there's hushed warnings about creating a scene.

When the foster family finds the Bowie knife under his pillow, he winds up placed with a different couple, and just in time for school. That's a trip. In some ways it's interesting (his mother had never thought history was a vital part of his education, except for those parts of history that haven't actually happened yet), but in most ways, it seems about as useful as those Nintendo games. And everyone else seems to think there is something deeply, deeply wrong with his reactions to both - the school, the games.

It's a whole new world. (Which, coincidentally, is a song in a recent movie that everyone but him knows about, and this is another reason that something is deeply, deeply wrong with him.)

There is no one moment when he picks this world over his mother's, when he decides they're right and she's wrong. He's just waiting for her to break out. And then he's just trying to survive here, like he's trained to do. But surviving has a whole different meaning here than the one he's used to, and the only thing that still seems to apply is that most people are deluded, and it's easy to hustle them to get whatever you want. _Everything's_ easy. And it's so much simpler to just let things be easy, and after a while his mother isn't someone to defend, she's someone a little embarrassing, someone he'd rather not bring up. It's not that she's crazy, it's just that... well, she's not something that fits into this world too well.

And she never comes back.

And when he stops to look around and think, he finds that he's living here in this world without killer machines, without guns and running and hiding and without leading anyone. That's the reality.

  



End file.
